Skip to main content

Leftover ingredients

Well, I managed to eat all of my Thanksgiving stream leftovers, which was no small feat. I definitely gained a few pounds over the last couple weeks, but that's life, right? Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), I have a few leftover ingredients that I need to get through. Some of them didn't last, like the small carrot that I had peeled and didn't use. Y'all know I hate wasting shit, but some things had to get tossed. Luckily, the leftover sweet potato, turnip, and celery still had some life in them, so I used those first.
I diced up about half of the sweet potato and about half of the turnip and boiled them in some salted water. I had to let that go for a while to soften up the turnip (the sweet potato goes a little faster). Now, when I say "for a while," I really mean "for-fucking-ever." While that was going...
...I went ahead and pan fried some adobo chicken legs in butter and olive oil...
...sautéed a chopped celery stalk with a few thinly sliced mushrooms in butter with a generous amount of black pepper...
...and caramelized some minced red onion and sliced garlic in butter.
When the potato and turnip were finally done boiling, I drained the water, then put them back into my pot with the onion and garlic, plus a couple tablespoons of butter and a dash of cream to get them nice and mashed.
Granted, the turnip was still a tiny bit chunky, but I don't like my mashed roots being fully smooth. 
It was still creamy enough that I was able to drag it a bit across my plate. Maybe could have been a little smoother for trying that, but it worked well enough.
Of course, dropping a chicken leg and the other veggies on opposite ends of the smear gave what I thought was a nice look. That nice little pop of light orange under the darker food is my kind of contrast. Of course, the mash tasted fantastic: it's sweet potato, turnip, garlic, onion, and butter. The only way I know to fuck that up would be to burn at least 4 of the ingredients, and that's still just a maybe. Everything else was fine, but that mash made me giggle.
Labels:

Comments

  1. NerdyCapDecember 4, 2024 at 10:17 AM

    I love the "mash made me giggle" lol. I understand this on a spiritual level. Sometimes you just put stuff together and the product you get is just so good you just giggle, almost like you proved yourself wrong. It's a nice confidence boost too because you realize "Oh shit, maybe I do know what I am doing" and god those moments are nice. Great looking dish, I would have asked for seconds.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I don't understand food

Part 1 the morning after, while eating a sausage, egg, and cheese everything bagel from Bergen Bagels Last night, I had the pleasure, privilege, and audacity to eat at a Brooklyn restaurant named Aska . I know it's cliche to refer to a fancy restaurant meal as a life-changing experience, but this was straight up paradigm-shattering. I've written before about food being a medium of communication, about how I strive to reduce food waste as much as I can, about sharing our cultures and stories with each other through the meals we create, but seeing how Chef Fredrik Berselius is able to do this at such an intricate, elegant, and elevated level is both humbling and inspiring. The experience started before the first bite. I walked into the 10 table restaurant, and they knew me by name. I was shown to my table (right in the middle of the place, looking directly into the open kitchen), and they even pulled my chair out for me and pushed it up under me. I was a little uncomfortable with...
Post a Comment
Read more

The hibiscus flower has bloomed, day 3

Now y'all know I love to experiment, and I generally go into my experiments with a plan, an experimental design, if you will. But after playing for a few days with squid and not royally fucking anything up, I was feeling a little restless, so I decided to just say "yes" to whatever popped into my head. Dry fried ginger, pattypan squash, and red onion? Sure, that sounds like a good combo. Purple sweet potato, shishitos, and sweet onion dry fried? Why not? What if I dump some some butter into that ginger/squash/red onion pan? I bet that will taste good. How about I dust some chopped squid with salt and oat flour and squirt it with some fresh lemon juice? I'm sure that will be fine. And I bet what will be even better will be tossing that squid into the ginger pan. That's when I remembered how much I loved that squid that was cooked low and slow. Unfortunately, I was out of white wine, so I looked in my fridge and saw some high pulp Simply Orange orange juice. I poure...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why not give a shit?

About a month ago, I cooked up a big pot of a miso vegan stew. It was a Sunday evening, so I knew I needed to cook enough for Sunday night dinner and Monday's lunch. A vendor was taking us out for dinner on Monday, so I needed enough to cover Tuesday's lunch, too. I had plans with a friend on Tuesday night, so I wouldn't have time to cook, so I needed enough for Tuesday dinner and Wednesday lunch, too, so I said, and I quote, "Fuck it. I'll just cook enough for the week." Unfortunately, as I packed away my leftovers that night, I realized that I cooked enough for a week and a half. Normally, that wouldn't be a huge issue, except that I was leaving town Friday morning and wouldn't be back until Monday evening and did not have room in my freezer to store more than a bowl. Luckily, I was able to pawn a few bowls off on coworkers, so it all worked out alright. However, when I told this story to someone close to me, they said I should think about donating t...
1 comment
Read more